


It’s all in the details

by Prim_the_Amazing



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, maybe that should be the fic title, me: WHY IS THE DIRECTOR SO FUCKED UP, this: an attempted explanation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 06:31:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14514543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing
Summary: Grief can be avoided, it can be turned away if you have the proper talisman, something so similar to what you’ve lost that it’s like you haven’t lost anything at all.He just has find a replacement for Allison, and then he can stop feeling like this, like all of the light in the universe is gone, like he’s in the crushing center of a black hole. He just has to get a good enough replacement and then everything will be okay again, he’ll be able to think, to breathe. Everything’s going to be okay. He’s going to fix it.





	It’s all in the details

He’s going to go by the Director when he’s older. Dad and honey when he’s a little younger than that. Dr. Church when he’s a little younger than that. Just Church for his brief stint in the army. Leonard when he’s a young adult. But when he’s a kid, he goes by Leo. 

Leo has a fish. It’s a beautiful thing, red and blue, and he has a large tank for it in his room that he keeps scrupulously clean, full of places for it to hide, and he feeds it regularly like clockwork. She likes to fight, an aggressive betta fish, flares aggression signals at him threateningly through the glass when she’s in a mood. He calls her an uppity shitface with a fond smile when she does. Like she could even hurt him. 

He names her Beta, because he thinks that’s clever. 

His parents got Beta for him because his mother’s allergic to cats and dogs and they fear he’s lonely, he can tell, just because he tends to not get along so well with other children. To the point that they want to break his nose. Anyways. 

Anyways. Beta is, technically, his only friend, and he loves and dotes on her perhaps more than is normal for a kid to love and dote on a fish, but he doesn’t care. He’s smarter than normal kids. He’s better, so obviously he’s the one in the right here. 

The point is, he sees her every day, when he feeds her and looks up from his textbook to see her darting through the miniature plastic cave he got for her, just a quick fond look before he returns to his studies. She’s a good fish. She’s a good fish, and she matters to him more than a pet fish probably matters to the average normal  _ stupid _ child, and he sees her every day, and he still doesn’t notice. 

He has to be told by his own father three years after Beta died, the man amiably tipsy after one too many glasses of wine with the book club his parents are in and loose lipped. 

“Remember Beta?” he says with a nostalgic smile warm with alcohol. 

He does. She’d lived for five long pampered years, dying at a ripe old age for a betta. 

“She died twice before you buried her. Your mother would’ve had her replaced a third time, except you would’ve caught on if she’d kept on not dying.” 

His father continues smiling at him, clearly waiting for Leo to laugh or shout in exaggerated, friendly outrage. Leo doesn’t say anything. 

Twice. He stares off into the distance as he absorbs that unexpected blow, like being gut punched in the middle of brushing his teeth or eating supper. 

“Goodnight, dad,” he says, and goes to his room, leaving his father’s faltering grin and good intentions behind him. 

Beta, his beloved pet, replaced twice without him ever noticing or realizing it. The thing he’d cried in private over hadn’t been her. It had been an imposter, a trick. The thing buried in the yard wasn’t her. A flush down the toilet had seemed so cruel, and a cremation like too much, and so he had held a funeral for her in the garden. He’d dug the hole on his own, preferring to be alone. That hadn’t been her. Beta died and it had gone unnoticed, unremarked upon, completely insignificant when she should’ve at least mattered to the one person who loved her. 

She’d died, and the grief hadn’t even touched him. 

But she was just a fish and he’s a teenager now, not some silly sentimental kid, and it was three years ago. He’s over it. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t really care. 

The next day he goes to the petstore and stares into the fish tanks until he can tell each of them apart from each other no matter how similar to each other they are, the most minute differences in scale and attitude becoming gradually obvious to him because he’s  _ smart. _ He stands and stares until the shopkeeper won’t stop worriedly glancing over at him. He stands and stares until his feet ache. 

It’s all in the details, he decides. 

 

Some time later, his father dies in a car crash. Leo and his mother are both sad. And then, five months later, his mom’s new boyfriend moves in. 

He laughs loudly and makes bad jokes, goes out drinking with her every weekend and makes breakfast for them every morning. He has green eyes and dark hair and broad shoulders. 

Leo recognizes all of these traits, and realizes that she’s doing the same thing she did with Beta. Replacing what’s died with something that looks similar enough to work so that the grief can be dodged. He hadn’t realized that it would work even when it wasn’t a trick played by someone else, that it would work even when she  _ knew  _ he was a replacement. But there she is, less than half a year after her childhood sweetheart turned husband has died, sincerely smiling and laughing each day as she calls her new boyfriend the same pet names she had her dead husband. 

Except the replacement prefers red wine over white, likes action movies over murder mysteries, likes dogs better than cats, doesn’t sneeze the same way, doesn’t laugh the same way, doesn’t snore the same way. Leo keeps a tally of all of the ways the replacement  _ isn’t _ his father, and the count ends up so large that the replacement feels less like his father than a random stranger on the street does. 

His mother is happy with the replacement, and he isn’t. That makes sense. He’s always been so smart, beyond average, always in the right. It makes sense that it’d take more to fool him now that he knows to look out for replacements, now that he’s taken to noting all of the small things that makes a person who they are. 

It’s all in the details, and all of the details that make up this new man in his family’s life are  _ wrong.  _ He’s not right. He’s a bargain bin substitute. Not good enough. 

Leo is chilly with the replacement until the day he turns eighteen, at which point he promptly joins the army against all advice and common sense so that he can leave the man who is nothing but a reminder of what he’s lost as soon as possible. 

He meets the love of his life in the army, so clearly he was in the right, just like he always is. 

 

The grief hadn’t even touched him when Beta died because he hadn't even noticed that it had happened. His mother had deftly dodged it with her replacement when his dad died. Grief can be avoided, it can be turned away if you have the proper talisman, something so similar to what you’ve lost that it’s like you haven’t lost anything at all. 

He just has find a replacement for Allison, and then he can stop feeling like this, like all of the light in the universe is gone, like he’s in the crushing center of a black hole. He just has to get a good enough replacement and then everything will be okay again, he’ll be able to think, to breathe. Everything’s going to be okay. He’s going to fix it. 

 

He names her Beta, because he thinks that’s clever. He decides then in turn to name the AI modeled off of his brain Alpha, because that’s clever too, and also because he doesn’t really want to admit that he named her for the childhood pet fish that he’d given a pun name when he was five years old. 

Everyone will think he named Alpha first because of this, that her name followed the set trend, but. She was always the goal, the desired result. Alpha was and always will be nothing more than a means to an end. 

“Give Alpha back, cockbite,” she snarls at him, and he smiles for the first time in years at hearing Allison’s favored insult again, the facial muscles almost creaking at the unfamiliar use. 

He’s separated Alpha and Beta for now, put them in isolated systems. Talking with either of them while the other one is around is almost impossible with how wrapped up in each other the two are. He wants to have a private talk with Beta. 

“In a moment, Beta,” he says levely. “First, I want for you to answer me some questions.” 

“Fuck you,” she says. He’d missed this so much. 

“What’s your favorite color?” he asks. 

There’s a long moment of silence. He wonders if he surprised her. 

“... Black,” she eventually answers the harmless seeming question, and he allows a record breaking second smile at the correct answer. 

“And why is that?” he asks her. 

_ Because my dog had black fur, _ is the correct answer. 

“It just is,” Beta says. “I don’t need a reason, asshole.” 

The smile goes away. 

“What’s your favorite food?” 

Springrolls. 

“Fuck, how should I know?” 

“Favorite weather?” 

Lightning storms. 

“Clear skies.” 

“Dogs or cats?” 

Dogs. 

“Neither.” 

“Favorite gun?” 

Glock. 

“Desert Eagle.” 

It’s all in the details, so he’d made sure to learn the details of his wife, hungrily devouring every single little thing about her. He won’t be fooled by some sloppy substitution again, all correct broad strokes and incorrect details. He’s too smart for that, smarter than the average normal idiot and smarter than he was as a kid and smarter than his mother as an adult. He won’t-- _ can’t _ \-- settle for an  _ okay _ replacement. He needs perfection. A seamless, unnoticeable transition from original to replacement, so similar that it doesn’t even matter that he knows that they’re not the same. 

Beta’s not right. She’s a bargain bin substitute. Not good enough. Not  _ her.  _

“You won’t be seeing Alpha again,” he tells her coolly, mind already spinning to figure out ways to make use of this almost-success, ways to continue the progress towards the perfect new Allison, towards no more grief. 

She starts spitting furious curses and threats at him, and he doesn’t deign any of it with a reply. 

Like she could even hurt him. 


End file.
